Pablo Torre: Fox is the ‘little guy’ in NFL rights battle

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Pablo Torre Fox Sports
Credit: Pablo Torre Finds Out, imagn images

The relationship between Fox Sports and the NFL is perhaps the most intriguing element of the ongoing story surrounding the rights negotiations that will reshape the modern media world.

Fox is leading the charge to keep NFL games on broadcast television. And it’s probably no conicidence that the federal government’s interest in anticompetitive practices from the NFL and concerns about streaming proliferation comes alongside meetings between Fox chairman emeritus Rupert Murdoch and President of the United States Donald Trump.

But the biggest challenge facing Fox is one that is purely financial. They have far less capital to spend on NFL rights than the likes of tech giants like Google, Amazon, and Netflix. Fox’s market cap is just under $25 billion. By comparison, Amazon is worth $2.93 trillion and Google is at $4.83 trillion.

David Samson and former ESPN president John Skipper joined Pablo Torre on a recent episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out and outlined the main issue facing Fox Sports in their quest to hold on to the NFL. They are now the smallest company in contention for NFL rights.

“What Rupert Murdoch is doing here is he is signifying something very fascinating, which is he is the little guy! Fox is the little guy among all these bidders now,” Torre said.

Skipper complimented Fox on selling some of their digital assets at a high point, however he noted that it has left the company short of the valuation of the current tech giants in the marketplace. And that has now left the company shorthanded when it comes to the competition for NFL rights with companies that can spend a lot more money than they can.

“Roger is in the process of increasing the prices, potentially, to where nobody can afford to buy NFL packages except Amazon, Netflix, YouTube, etc. CBS has already got the most problem, but they’ve already been to them and they’re in a position where they can’t give up the NFL. So they’re going to pay and set the market at some 35-50% increase over the recently negotiated deals,” Skipper said.

“That’s why Rupert Murdoch is going to the White House,” Torre said. “The external messaging around this secret meeting has been, ‘this is because we are fighting for the consumers.’ Of course what he’s doing is trying to scare the NFL into having something like the status quo remain possible, preferable even, as they consider we’re going to blow up all these deals because of the streamers.”

David Samson argued that Fox was representing the mainstream media companies that are currently airing NFL games and that the government could not solely intervene on just their behalf, it would have to benefit all of broadcast television. That might be true, but the reports of Rupert Murdoch meeting with Donald Trump to pressure Roger Goodell and the NFL certainly stand to see them as the major benefactor. And when you consider just how perilous a financial position Fox is in compared to the big tech companies and how far behind they are in their balance sheets, and the political pressure to get a good deal becomes an act of survival more than anything else.

The post Pablo Torre: Fox is the ‘little guy’ in NFL rights battle appeared first on Awful Announcing.



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